Participation Unit - Deliberative Research
COI/The Electoral Commission — Public Deliberation on the Future Funding of Political Parties in the UK (ongoing, 2006): In late summer 2006 we are conducting a series of five deliberative workshops with the general public on political party funding, designed to feed into the Electoral Commission's contribution to the Phillips Review of Political Party Funding. Workshops will be conducted across all four countries of the UK, drawing on Ipsos MORI's local capacity and expertise. Previous studies show that political party funding issues are relatively little thought about or understood by the general public. With this in mind, the project requires an innovative design (e.g. using voting, 'diary rooms' and film footage to help communicate the issues) and our researchers' thorough knowledge of the issues to make the deliberative process simple and engaging for participants. Since the findings will be open to public scrutiny, using a robust, transparent analysis process will be crucial to provide evidence on public deliberation that informs the Electoral Commission's recommendations.
Local Council Budget workshops (ongoing): our budget workshops are multi-layered exercises which empower citizens to think about spending priorities in a number of different ways. One very good example is our work for Oxfordshire CC, which has taken place in January for the last four years. This involves the active participation of all three group leaders for a whole day, together with the County Treasurer and a number of accountants. We use a 'real life' spreadsheet model to provide a focus for trade-offs. Similar workshops have been carried out by a number of authorities including London Borough of Richmond upon Thames, Wiltshire, Bucks, Hampshire and Kent.
Local Council Political Engagement workshops (ongoing): Ipsos MORI has undertaken many workshops (often coupled with research surveys and consultative council mailouts/questionnaires) on models of political management. One exercise which was particularly challenging, but was regarded by the client as very successful, was a 2003 workshop on how many councillors Norfolk CC needs to operate effectively — undertaken as part of the Council's 'periodic electoral review'. The day included day-in-in-the-life briefings from group leaders, use of video and Q&A sessions with Council representatives to give participants a better understanding of the role that Councillors play. As a result, participant's views shifted from predominantly negative and critical to showing a better understanding of the role and responsibilities of Councillors. The majority concluded that the current council size was sufficient, although some (mainly older participants of higher social grades) felt there was some room for streamlining the political management arrangements. Ipsos MORI's report was included in the Council's submission to the Boundary Committee for England.
English Secondary Students Association/DCA — Citizen's Juries in Schools (ongoing): ESSA have received funding from the DCA to develop a model for implementing Citizens Juries in schools. The project will involve four trial Juries in schools to inform the development of the model. Ipsos MORI will be acting in a consultative role, providing advice and guidance at all stages from design to implementation and evaluation.
Home Office — Deliberating on Summary Justice (ongoing): We are currently reporting on a series of deliberative groups designed to help the public discuss Summary Justice in an informed and meaningful way. This is an issue that many people have few opinions on and know very little about. Consequently it lent itself to a more deliberative approach where participants were given information about the topics and issues to be discussed.
Save the Children — Child Poverty in the UK (2006): This research was designed to identify the potential for communicating the concepts and creative symbols that make up the Save the Children Child Poverty campaign in the UK. The project involved qualitative research with supporters and 'potential' supporters of Save the Children.
In addition to attending focus group discussions, participants were asked to complete pre-group and post-group diaries in order to understand more about their lifestyles, motivations, attitudes and drivers. The role of the diaries was to probe into participant's lives to explore how life in Britain is experienced and how they understand society to work, as well as what influences these opinions and how their ideas are formed. These simple written diaries offered space for notes and to draw and stick pictures, and stick in magazine and newspaper headlines, providing colourful visual context. The post-group diaries were designed to explore the impact of the group discussion on participants and see which of the creative materials and messages had been most effective, memorable and compelling.
Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) — Deliberating on diet and Health (2006): We have recently conducted three workshops for BBSRC exploring attitudes towards diet and health. This was followed by a quantitative survey via a face-to-face methodology. The project was designed to enable members of the public to give their views on a number of issues on diet and health, including an indication of how they believe that scientific funding in this area should be distributed.
Fabian Society (2005): A day-long deliberative workshop with 25 members of the public in London where we debated different ways to tackle the child poverty issue in the UK. Sessions within the workshop looked at awareness of the issues, key themes and topics within the discourse of child poverty and life chances, and different ways to address the problems and communicate solutions.
London Borough of Southwark Area Governance (2000 - 05): we regularly work with Southwark as part of their modernising local government programme. Consultations undertaken as part of this workstream include facilitating a workshop among stakeholders to explore their attitudes towards proposed options for political management in the Borough and running a workshop with local residents to explore their attitudes towards proposed new models for local decision-making (Area Ward Committees, Area Consultative Forums and Area Service Co-ordination Forums).
OfCom — Public Service Broadcasting Deliberative Workshops (2004): These were day-long sessions held on Saturdays in various areas nationwide including Scotland. The research was to explore understanding and views of PSB, the licence fee and future changes as analogue is turned off and huge numbers of free and paid for digital services emerge; all low salience issues. During the day respondents were given a wealth of information to assist in their deliberations about this topic, such as how much different programmes cost to make, their value to the channel, how schedules are planned, where the licence fee goes and why. They also had the opportunity to make up their own schedules based on what they had learnt, and we explored future scenarios like what would happen if the licence fee went up by certain amounts, got split between other terrestrial channels and so on.
Office of Science and Technology — Public Consultation on Developments in the Biosciences: This research investigated public attitudes to developments in biotechnology and involved 12 paired Saturday workshops across the UK, and a quantitative survey among over 1,100 members of the People's Panel. The results fed into the deliberations of the Ministerial Committee on Biotechnology. This work was groundbreaking in terms of its achievements on public dialogue on complex issues, and specifically on science issues. The results also fed into the Cabinet Office Review of the Advisory and Regulatory Framework for Biotechnology in the UK. This in turn informed Lord Sainsbury's Review of the regulations on biotechnology.